


Portraits

by what_alchemy



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Family, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-21
Updated: 2011-07-21
Packaged: 2017-10-21 15:28:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/226715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/what_alchemy/pseuds/what_alchemy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim and Spock gain a little insight into Sarek.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Portraits

Spock had that stubborn set to his jaw that meant he was digging in his heels. Whenever that happened, and the brittle tension of all his locked up muscles threatened to crack Jim’s own cool, Jim imagined that Spock was literally fastening his feet to the ground, and he would become as unmovable as a stubborn toddler who, at any moment, might pitch its weight at Jim’s feet and begin to scream. A 6’1’’, 250 pound (Vulcans are _heavy_ , man) toddler with an impassive expression, but a toddler nonetheless. Jim sighed and passed a hand over his face, wondering if he looked as groggy and worn out as he felt. When pain spiked in the vicinity of his cracked ribs, he regretted moving his arm at all.

“Look Spock, I don’t see the problem here,” he said, trying to keep the frustration from his voice. “Your dad even said he doesn’t care, and I’d rather crash in a nice condo than some hotel where there’s only a view of the parking lot and no kitchen at all.” Jim knew it was a low blow, but with calculated manipulation and just the hint of a whine in his tone, he continued. “My whole body _really hurts_ , Spock.” He let his bottom lip protrude, just a little bit.

Minutely, the hard line of Spock’s shoulders sloped into a defeated slump. “My father was merely being polite,” Spock said, but Jim knew he’d won this battle when Spock picked up both their duffles and moved toward the air car rental section of San Francisco spaceport. Through the exhaustion and the pain and the shuttle-grubby feeling he’d have to shower off ASAP, Jim felt a swell of affection, and he shuffled after Spock with as much dignity as he could muster while he attempted not to move his upper body at all. He wanted to bury his face into the back of Spock’s neck and squeeze around his torso, but Spock would hate that in the middle of a bustling spaceport. Plus it would probably hurt. But a starship captain could dream.

—

Turns out, ambassador’s digs were on the outskirts of the city. Very posh if he extrapolated correctly, but not exactly convenient. The whole plan was backfiring on Jim and his sore ribs, but he was careful not to complain about the length of the drive. He just watched northern California pass outside his window as Spock steered them around, silent, jaw ticking with whatever sour thing he wasn’t saying.

Jim sighed.

“Okay, out with it,” he said. “Anyone would think I’d asked you to declare your feelings via interpretive dance, not _stay at your family home_.”

“My family home—” Spock bit back whatever it was and pressed his lips together into a bloodless white line. Jim watched his hands squeeze hard around the steering wheel. Jim shifted very carefully in his seat. He blinked a lot and then opened his eyes wide to train them on Spock. He wanted to be alert for this.

“What, Spock?” he said, voice soft. Spock flexed his fingers on the steering wheel, forced his death grip looser.

Spock didn’t look at him. Voice modulated into deliberate evenness, he said, “My family home was a sprawling estate outside Shi’kahr, where the night sky was clear enough to see distant stars and planets. When Earth was visible, my mother would sit with me on the balcony and tell me Terran fairy tales, even when I grew too old for such things and my father disapproved.”

If Jim could move his arms, he would have given himself a hard punch right in the face. As it was, he couldn’t think of anything to say, _I’m sorry_ being such an inadequate phrase for sticking his foot right back into the wound of an imploded planet and endangered species and dead mother. After a moment, Spock spoke again.

“This condominium is and always has been my father’s alone, for use in his official capacity. It may as well be an office. I myself have certainly not entered it since I was a child; indeed, I was not welcome. He made that clear.”

Spock was, despite the steadfast nature of their union once they finally got their act together, remarkably tight-lipped on the subject of his family. In the three years since the launch of the mission, and the twenty-some months of their relationship, Jim had managed to cobble together very little: a mother with boundless love but little control over familial matters, some kind of loyal but truly hideous pet, and a distant father who micromanaged every aspect of his son’s life to the point of browbeating. That was not the Sarek Jim had come to know (if one could call their bi-annual nods at each other ‘knowing’), but he could see that living through the destruction of his entire planet had given Sarek a different set of priorities. The trouble was that Jim wasn’t sure Spock saw that, too. Spock and Sarek’s interactions were practically identical to Jim and Sarek’s (with some added Acrobatic Eyebrows of Disapproval for good measure), but Jim had held his tongue this long. He didn’t, after all, need Spock’s answering scrutiny on _Jim’s_ family situation. The less light shed on that, the better.

Jim didn’t trust himself not to make it worse with words. His mouth had always gotten him into trouble — skirmish with Romulans in the neutral zone resulting in his current condition and the _Enterprise_ ’s necessary repairs notwithstanding. So he steeled himself against the twinge in his ribs and inched his hand over the emergency brake to lay it on Spock’s thigh. Spock’s adam’s apple bobbed before he settled one hand over Jim’s, a soothing heat.

—

Spock let them into Sarek’s condo by pressing his hand to a sensor at the front door. Jim read the rise of both Spock’s eyebrows as moderate surprise when the mechanism chimed for entry. Spock pushed the door and held it open for him. He must have caught the question in Jim’s face, because he said, “I was not certain the locks had ever been keyed to my handprint. I was prepared to… manipulate the security system.”

Jim shot him a weary smile. “Also known as hacking. Spock, I’m so proud.”

The exasperated look Spock managed to convey with only the downward slope of his brows and a narrowing of his eyes was softened by the gentle hand at the small of Jim’s back, ushering him through the entryway.

The condo was a study in clean lines and neutral colors. A thin patina of dust covered the counters; with Sarek’s duties keeping him on New Vulcan, there had been no one in here for months. Spock set the duffles down and began to go through the kitchen cupboards.

“I will clean and make the bed, Jim,” he said. He nodded at the couch in the next room. “Rest, now.”

“You rest too,” Jim said, but Spock either didn’t hear him or was just ignoring him, and Jim wasn’t counting on those ears’ sudden deafness. He sighed and walked gingerly into the living room. In the corner some seven feet away was a shelving unit, and there were holos. Dozens of them. Jim turned and peered at Spock, now crouched in front of the sink, digging for cleaning supplies. He looked back at the shelf. “Huh.” He paused at the couch for just a moment before deciding to get his busted ass over to that corner.

Amanda Grayson had become, in Jim’s mind, a sort of mythical figure, a legend beyond reproach, a sinless Madonna. Jim reached out and plucked a holo from off the first shelf. She smiled up at him, eyes big and brown and perfectly Spocklike. Lighted, expressive, a little mischievous. Jim ran his thumb over the high crest of her cheekbone; he knew just what it would feel like. He touched that cheekbone every day. A thickness gathered at his throat, but he swallowed it away. _She would be so easy to love,_ he thought. _As easy as Spock._ For all his Vulcan features and mannerisms — _conditioning_ , Jim thought with an uncharitable twist of his mouth — Spock looked like her.

He set the frame down. In the next holo, a supine Amanda held a tiny bundle obscured by swaths of fabric. She looked tired. And happy. She was laughing at something Sarek must have been saying, and Jim wondered, not for the first time, what two different men Amanda and the rest of the universe saw.

The next one was Spock, and in his chest Jim couldn’t tell if his heart was soaring or breaking. Sometimes it felt like the same thing. Spock was naked, chubby and just learning to crawl. He stared up at the camera with such wide eyed determination that Jim had to laugh. His eyes took up about three quarters of his face, a thin line of drool trickled from his tiny rosebud mouth, and his nose was a rising bump that only hinted at its future proportions. He was mostly bald but for some wisps of black about his crown, and his cheeks were fat and full. Jim imagined them impossibly soft and baby-fragrant, but it was the ears Jim found himself melting for. Small and delicate and perfect, Jim wanted to touch his fingertip to the tiny point, run it along the pale green shell, trace that ear’s topography with the skin of his lips. He supposed he could go do that right now to the full grown man in the other room, but it wasn’t the same. He wanted to take this baby Spock and tuck him into his chest cavity and never let him go. He even had the urge to put him in his mouth and hold him there like some kind of big cat. He shook his head, put down the holo and resisted the urge to back away from whatever bizarre, primal stuff looking at Spock babies stirred in him.

The holo beside it featured Spock as a toddler, hair not much thicker than it was when he was an infant (but quite a bit curlier, and Jim vowed right then that he’d see it on the grown version someday), and he was limp looking up at the camera with unrepressed glee as an older boy, maybe sixteen, held him by his armpits. The other boy was grinning, his hair was shaggy, and he was all gangly limbs with Spock has his prize. Jim frowned. What kind of Vulcan was this boy, with his toothy smile and unkempt hair, no trademark bangs to speak of? As Jim watched, he hugged Spock to his chest, kissed the top of his fuzzy head, and held him out again. The holo played over and over as Jim watched, and wondered.

Spock came up behind him, chest to his back, and took the holo from his hands. Jim turned his head just enough to make out Spock’s profile, the softening around his eyes and mouth. He couldn’t tell if it was fondness or sadness.

“His name was Sybok,” Spock said. Jim let himself sag against his lover.

Jim took the Sybok holo back. “Was he half human too?” It seemed the only explanation, and Spock was not the only one in existence, after all. Just the most prominent one, his parents being who they were.

A short breath left Spock’s lungs through his nose in a hard puff. Spock’s version of laughter, subheading: bitter.

“No,” Spock said. “Just a failure, as our father called him. When he turned Sybok from the House of Surak, he severed all familial bonds with him. That included me. I cannot even be certain he is dead, though his name was not among the list of survivors.”

Spock took the holo back again and set it where it belonged. His hands settled on Jim’s hips. Both of them looked at the tableau of holos — they were all images of Amanda and Spock at various ages, Amanda ever lovely, Spock increasingly awkward and teenaged until finally there was a recent one of him, terribly handsome in his science blues. There was only the one of Sybok, utterly unabashed in his happiness. There were none of Sarek himself.

“I did not know my father kept these here,” Spock said suddenly. The silence had become so heavy that Jim startled to hear Spock’s voice. Spock remained steady and warm behind him. He could feel Spock’s breath on his neck.

“They’re nice,” Jim offered. _Nice_ didn’t exactly cover what it was, but it was all Jim could think to say now that he was reordering everything he knew about Spock’s life pre-Starfleet. It must have been happier than his previous assumptions made it out to be. Happier, he thought, and infinitely sadder, too.

Spock stepped away and pulled on Jim’s hand. He led him through the condo into the master bedroom, fresh sheets turned down. More holos: Amanda in Vulcan bridalwear on the right bedside table, Spock, solemn and small at seven years old on the left. Jim made a decision and sank onto the left edge.

“I like tiny you,” he said. “It makes me want to squeeze you until you can’t breathe.”

“I am certain that’s illogical even for a human, Jim.” Spock began to strip off his clothes, and Jim tried to enjoy the view, but a few blinks and the display of flesh was hidden in pajamas unearthed from Spock’s duffle.

Jim shooed Spock’s hands away —“For Christ’s sake, Spock, I’m not an invalid!”— and wrangled himself out of his clothes until he was in only an undershirt and Starfleet briefs. Pajamas, he decided, were too much hassle. With an exaggerated sigh, he laid himself on his back gingerly, and Spock curled around him, face in his hair, cold, knobbly toes grazing Jim’s soles, but nothing else touching in deference to Jim’s ribs.

“Time is it?” Jim mumbled.

“1607 Pacific Time. We should make an effort not to sleep for too long.”

“Stay with me?”

“Yes.”

The Spock on the bedside table blinked big brown eyes at him. His bangs were just slightly crooked, like whoever had cut his hair had done so while distracted, or like Spock had fidgeted or ducked away from the shears. Jim smiled at the image and let himself fall away.

—

Jim woke to an empty bed, a full bladder, and a chrono that read 1842. He struggled to push himself upright and hissed when he attained his goal. He pressed his right hand to his side and tried to let his breath out slowly. He forced himself onto his feet and stumped over to the door to find the bathroom.

He stopped in the doorway when he heard Spock’s voice and the crackle of a long-range subspace transmission.

“Live long and prosper, Father.”


End file.
